lately

Since my last we have had

a)      the Sea Olympics, which, aside from an opening invocation from our now departed (for vacation) and much missed senior crew member, Kostas, quoting Homer and referring to matters of honor and sportspersonship, in no particular way resembled any other Olympics I have ever heard of (though, having been eliminated in a matter of seconds from the only event in which I participated, three-legged dodge ball, I may not be the best commentator on the event),

b)      two days of classes in the midst of what must be, for the faculty and perhaps the students, the most challenging part of the voyage, with class sessions only sporadically between extended stays in various Asian ports,

c)       the Talent Show, which, while exhibiting extraordinary skills in dance, music, comedy, etc., seemed to me most remarkable for its duration, of a kind I’d previously, in the cultural realm, associated only with Wagner,

d)      a day devoted to preparation for Vietnam, which showed off our educational capacities at their best: a splendid overview from Ted Farmer, one of America’s foremost experts on the history of Asia; a one-of-a-kind interview with Senator Chuck Robb and Mrs. Lynda Johnson Robb about their experiences during the American war in Vietnam; similar reflections from our marketing professor, Donald Howard, who served in the air force; and very moving reflections from two students and one resident director of Vietnamese descent, including recollections of their family members’ experience during the evacuation of Saigon, followed that evening by brilliant preparatory talks on Singapore from Farmer (again), business professor Molly Takeda, and M.I.T. anthropologist Stefan Helmreich (the last of these perhaps the most impressive performance of the voyage so far, in my opinion, and I say that not only because the Hotel Director told me the next morning that he’d liked it and assumed it had been I who’d given it), and

e)      a day, yesterday, in Singapore, which left a young member of my family perplexed as to whether he liked the food better there or in India, a quandary that, as I’m sure you’ll agree, every young person must come to be faced with at some time or other.

We’ll reach Saigon in two days.  The sea’s calm, aside from the occasional floating by of large red oil drums (!), and, at lunch, a school of dolphins swimming in the ship’s wake on the starboard side.

 

after India

Just two observations about our students as we lose the lights of India:

 

1)      My family and I went to Kathikali performances on successive nights and by unlikely (so the director at the second performance assured me) coincidence happened to see the same scene performed by two different companies.  Both were astonishing—the form belies everything I’ve tended to assume about drama, in spite of my having received good, relevant tutelage by folks who know better, and I’ll need to start over, in a way, now—so that the most apparent difference was between the two audiences.  Our students, confronted with something new and, to most of our eyes, very strange, with all kinds of baffling cues about gender, language, and bodily movement, both behaved well and clearly got it.  The next night, a crowd of French adults whistled and hooted and misbehaved and clearly hadn’t a clue what they were seeing. 

2)      Tonight the usual post-port “reflection” was a bit different from the usual: we had an hour beforehand in which students and faculty presented work they’d done in India, and then the usual “sharing” that happens on most such nights at 8 PM was replaced by small group discussion.  The students were very impressive at both—none more so, clearly, than the “gap year” student who (I’ll not name her here because I haven’t asked her permission) under the auspices of a Presidential scholarship is doing research on women’s issues in the various reports and gave a powerful talk about her interviews in India with victims of sex trafficking. It was the kind of serious undergraduate work one would hope would go on in a program like this.

 

At the end of the first session there was a splendid exchange between two members of our faculty, John Downing and Chandra Ranade, about the value of “anecdotes”—which are, after all, the best we sometimes muster, any of us, students or faculty, during these short visits—and about how they can lead, under the best of circumstances, to further research.  We none of us, those of us (like I) who stayed in Kerala and others who traveled far, saw much of India.  But we all saw enough to bring something back, to bring something to bear.  The headline in Wednesday’s Hindu, reporting on a new census, reads, “Half of India’s homes have cellphones, not toilets.”  How do these things happen?  How do they get undone, improved?  One way, I suppose, is that someone says, “This is so,” and some others then say—John Downing talked about Naipaul and the million mutinies—“This must change.”  And a long time after, maybe, something different this way comes.  One way to hear the “This is so” would be to ask a student.  It’s best when it comes from them.

calm

We have had, knock on wood, calm seas for a bit now: their sunny, flat beauty is a lovely luxury.  There is, accordingly, something of a routine to our regular class days by now too—we have passed, or are passing, through midterms, and people are getting a clearer sense of where we all are, academically and otherwise.  By tomorrow the run-up to arrival in the next port will begin in earnest, but really it has already begun, because two “interport students” from India have been with us since Mauritius.  They were just here in my office to talk about their role in tomorrow’s cultural pre-port briefing (our ritual for our second night before any port), and when I asked them what they might say about how Semester at Sea has struck them, they took great delight in celebrating the openness of American students.  For just a second I was able, for one of the rare times on this voyage, to remember myself at 20 and to recall how the English and Irish students I met then would comment on our American “openness,” our splendid self-serving naïve Yankee gab. 

 

There is also, I confess, a little shadow over this sequence of the voyage, occasioned by some bad behavior during our brief stay in Mauritius.  But that is being processed in a steady, deliberate way, and there is reason to hope that it will have been only an unhappy exception.

 

The best ‘the-dog-at-my-homework’ excuse I have ever received came about 15 months ago, when I was having to pester all the faculty on our voyage to submit their syllabi for approval by the relevant UVA departments.  One among them, Rob Thomas, an astonishingly accomplished professor from Montana-Western, explained that he was about to leave for Nepal to train sherpa guides in geology; he’d be on or near Mt. Everest for some weeks and wouldn’t have an internet connection—could his syllabus be a little late?  Well, yes.  He’ll be lecturing about his experience in Nepal in the Union tonight after dinner.

a passage to India

My silence here has a simple and unhappy explanation: beginning two days short of Cape Town the heavy seas began to get to me, and between Cape Town and Mauritius—which we left earlier today—I alternated my required sessions here at the desktop computer, or at the nearby table where I meet with students faculty and staff, with recuperative sessions in bed.  I am hoping that perhaps I may now have found the right sized patch to allow me to be both awake enough and other than ill enough so that I can fulfill my duties.  But with that very sentence the boat resumed its steady rocking—big waves now, and my desk chair wants to lurch back, and my desk drawers have already swung open.  We’ll see.

 

Cape Town’s, and South Africa’s, combination of a horrific political and social past, and a not much redeemed present, with astonishing natural wonders is hard to put together in one.  It needs instead half a dozen headings or more.  Our morning spent in Mauritius—which, as you may know—came, because of the heavy seas, a full day late, was half so long as originally scheduled, and came only after we had announced on the ship that no disembarkation was possible: that seems a much clearer and digestible (if I can, without excessive risk, use that word just now) mélange.  Or rather it was such an extraordinary mix of so many elements—Chinese, India, African, European—that, especially given the brevity of our visit, it seemed much easier simply to take as a mélange, an impressive one, a moving one, but a kind of quick glance at a collage, the individual materials of which will have to be returned to at another time.

 

But now, per Whitman:

 

Passage to more than India! 

O secret of the earth and sky! 235

Of you, O waters of the sea! O winding creeks and rivers! 

Of you, O woods and fields! Of you, strong mountains of my land! 
Of you, O prairies! Of you, gray rocks! 

O morning red! O clouds! O rain and snows!  O day and night, passage to you! 240   

 

O sun and moon, and all you stars! Sirius and Jupiter!  Passage to you!    

 

Passage—immediate passage! the blood burns in my veins! 

Away, O soul! hoist instantly the anchor! 

Cut the hawsers—haul out—shake out every sail! 245

Have we not stood here like trees in the ground long enough? 

Have we not grovell’d here long enough, eating and drinking like mere brutes? 

Have we not darken’d and dazed ourselves with books long enough?

 

Well, no.  But give us time…